Salmon P. Chase

Salmon Portland Chase (13 January 1808-7 May 1873) was US Senator from Ohio (R) from 4 March 1849 to 3 March 1855 (succeeding William Allen and preceding George E. Pugh) and from 4 to 6 March 1861 (succeeding Pugh and preceding John Sherman), Governor from 14 January 1856 to 9 January 1860 (succeeding William Medill and preceding William Dennison Jr.), US Secretary of the Treasury from 7 March 1861 to 30 June 1864 (succeeding John Adams Dix and preceding William P. Fessenden), and Chief Justice of the United States from 6 December 1864 to 7 May 1873 (succeeding Roger B. Taney and preceding Morrison Waite).

Biography
Salmon Portland Chase was born in Cornish, New Hampshire in 1808, and he studied law under Attorney General William Wirt before establishing a legal practice in Cincinnati, Ohio. He became an anti-slavery activist and defended fugitive slaves in court, and he left the Whigs in 1841 to become the leader of the Liberty Party. He led a strange and shifting political course; he was a dedicated opponent of slavery, but he was known to be a political opportunist who supported anti-extensionism over abolitionism. Chase brought his pragmatic approach to the idealistic program of the party, having leaned towards the Democrats on other issues during the mid-1840s, and siding with any party that would adopt a strong anti-extension platform. As the leader of a powerful faction within the Liberty Party, he sought a broad union of all anti-extensionists who would be more effective than the Liberty Party, including cooperation with anti-extension Whigs and Democrats. In 1848, he helped establish the Free Soil Party and recruited Martin Van Buren as the party's presidential nominee. He was elected to the US Senate the following year, and he opposed the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In the aftermath of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Chase helped establish the Republican Party, opposing the extension of slavery into the territories. He went on to serve as Governor of Ohio from 1856 to 1860, and he served as Secretary of the Treasury in Abraham Lincoln's cabinet during the American Civil War. He resigned in 1864, and he was appointed to the US Supreme Court to succeed Roger B. Taney, becoming Chief Justice. He presided over the impeachment proceedings against President Andew Johnson, and he unsuccessfully sought the presidency in 1868 and 1872. He died in office in 1873.